The air pocket had caught our plane just after the pilot passed the decision altitude of 200 feet, but he still gunned the engines because either he would successfully go around and live to tell the tale or we’d be dead in seconds. We were nose down and no one made a sound. I couldn’t speak for the others, but I wasn’t petrified with fear, I was thankful.

I had lived a full life, despite being only 20 years old. I’d seen empires collapse, hyperinflation, the scars of the second world war and more beautiful women than you could shake a stick at. I had lived in Poland and America and lived with people from China and Egypt. I’d enjoyed the beautiful bliss of 80s New England, with Saturday morning cartoons and Friday night pizza as well as experiencing the amazing economic revival of the post-communist world.

I figured I couldn’t be bitter that now it was time to say goodbye. If anything, I was thankful. I had, at that stage of my life, not yet entirely made up my mind as to whether or not there was a God. It was a question I was privileged enough to mull over while reading TS Eliot’s poetry surrounded by the Alps over lake Lugano. As such, I figured that seconds before my flight smashed into the airport was as good a time as any to send up a prayer of thanks for a life well lived, which I promptly did.

The engines whined and boomed and for a moment the plane couldn’t make up its mind, like a seesaw that seemed to rise and fall until finally, it turned out that this was not the end of my life, but just the beginning. Soon enough, I was back on the ground. I called my mom to tell her that I was still alive, but given that she didn’t know I was supposed to be dead, the information was not exactly greeted with gushing pangs of emotion. I went about the rest of the day, and the rest of my life.